Backup chains gettting mixed together
I have a network drive which Acronis 2014 does a file backup to every night. Later a file sync program sync's the backup directory to a USB drive connected to the PC.
This works for a few nights and then the network drive and the USB drives (in my case the X: drive) backups start intermixing. Every 5 backups is supposed to be a full backup. But instead I now have 6 incremental backups since I suppose the counts are no longer correct.
See the attached picture.
The first time this happened, I wiped out all backups and started with a clean database. It worked for a few nights and then this happened again. Is there any way to tell Acronis not to search various drives? Note that I have Auto-search at startup unchecked.
What happens is, at some point which I haven't determined, some of the backup locations change from 192.168.1.11 to X: even though they were created in 192.168.1.11. If I pull the USB off line then recovery won't work because it can't find all of the backup.
Single versions are not immune to this either.
What I have done is start all over. I have given each task its own directory location to avoid confusion. For the sync drive, I have changed the top level directory name slightly so that the directory paths won't match exactly.
In a few days I will let you know the result of this, one way or the other.
Roger,
Do you remember whether you ever edited the tasks?
Here is an extract from my guide (link 2 below) which I have found works well for me, but I do not have network drives.
Figure 11-Inc: Example of custom/incremental backup method settings
If using incremental type backups (which is full + X Inc), the 11-Inc is my recommended method. Change the 6 or 4 to fit your available storage.
These automatic cleanup settings will provide for automatic deletion of the oldest backups after the "Store no more than X number of chains" quota has been reached.
In this example, deletion of oldest backup will occur immediately following creation of backup #29.
Allow space for 1 more full backup in addition to "Store no more than X number of chains" as the program will NOT delete the oldest full until its replacement has been successfully created.
In this example, one chain or one recent version chain =1 full plus 6 inc or 7 files per chain.
If keeping 4 recent version chains (4 chains of 7 each) retention would be 28 files. Deletion of oldest chain will occur after backup 29 (full).
Also understand the limitations/risk factor of incremental backups. If one inc backups gets corrupt or accidentally deleted, all newer inc are worthless so avoid excessive number of incremental backups. Always maintain a full backup set which are current This explains why keeping a reasonable number of x "recent version chains" can be very important. Keeping a high number of incremental is a high risk factor to your backup data and should be avoided.
For a better understanding of the differences between Inc and Dif as it relates to the safety factor, review this link.
http://forum.acronis.com/forum/40810
When restoring an Incremental backup, select the specific Inc file to be restored and all preceding Incremental files plus the full backup base must be present and will be restored (multiple files required).
This continued to happen occasionally. Whenever it did I wiped all backups and all history starting over with a black slate.
My theory as to what is happening... When Acronis started (probably on reboot), the USB (sync) drive is available immediately. The NAS drive which contains the original backup chains may be sometimes not available yet. Acronis looks for the backup files by name and finds the ones on the USB (sync) drive first as they are identical to the originals. Some or all the files listed in the backup set now point to the USB drive instead of the NAS drive.
What I have done is to remove automatic sync from this machine and now do it once every few days. If I reboot, I make sure the USB drive is disconnected. I have not had a problem since.